This invention relates to packings intended for use in promoting gas/liquid and liquid/liquid contact processes in absorption towers and the like. These packings are dumped into absorption towers where they assume random orientation and provide surface for augmenting the total amount of liquid surface available to gas flowing through the process zone.
Plastic absorption tower packings of the type having the general configuration of a filamentous toroidal helix are known in the art. Such packings as introduced by A. J. Teller and described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,867,425 have been very successful in commerce. An excessive tendency for the early packings of this type to nest and to interlock was mitigated by further improvements such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,752,453 to R. F. Doyne. Doyne added a circumferential ring to the original Teller design and significantly reduced the tendency to interlocking of the toroidal loop members of the packing elements.
Nevertheless, a significant tendency to nest did remain in the Doyne design. Consequently, it remained desirable to improve still further on the packings of the type under discussion and to do so in a manner that would not unduly interfere with the practical manufacture of such packings by an injection molding of the packing elements from thermoplastic materials.
It is to be understood that the above evaluation of the background is necessarily made with the advantage of knowing the value of the present invention. It is not to be inferred that prior artisans understood the problems associated with the earlier work as it has been described herein.